Surface profile inspection device

Abstract

A surface profile inspection device producing a sheet of light propagating in a linear region forming a plane from a laser beam emitted from a laser light source and irradiating the sheet of light to an object to be measured, and including an image capturing unit capturing an image of the object to be measured and a configuration data generating unit extracting a light section line defined by an irradiation of the sheet of light from image data of the captured image and generating surface profile data of the object to be measured. The laser light source includes a semiconductor laser emitting a laser beam from a light emitting layer formed in a linear direction along a boarder of a p-n junction. An attitude of the semiconductor laser is set to arrange the linear direction to be unparallel to a spread direction of the sheet of light.

The invention claimed is: 
     
       1. A surface profile inspection device, comprising:
 a laser projecting unit producing a sheet of light propagating in a linear region forming a plane from a laser beam emitted from a laser light source by an optical system and irradiating the sheet of light to an object to be measured; 
 an image capturing unit capturing an image of the object to be measured; 
 a configuration data generating unit extracting a light section line defined by an irradiation of the sheet of light on the object to be measured from image data of the image captured by the image capturing unit and generating surface profile data of the object to be measured; 
 the laser light source including a semiconductor laser emitting a laser beam from a light emitting layer formed in a linear direction along a boarder of a p-n junction; and wherein 
 an attitude of the semiconductor laser is set to arrange the linear direction to be unparallel to a spread direction of the sheet of light. 
 
     
     
       2. The surface profile inspection device according to  claim 1 , wherein the attitude of the semiconductor laser is set to arrange the linear direction to be orthogonal to the spread direction of the sheet of light. 
     
     
       3. The surface profile inspection device according to  claim 1 , wherein the optical system includes a cylindrical lens producing the sheet of light from the laser beam. 
     
     
       4. The surface profile inspection device according to  claim 1 , wherein
 the attitude of the semiconductor laser is set to arrange the linear direction to be orthogonal to the spread direction of the sheet of light; and 
 the optical system includes a cylindrical lens producing the sheet of light from the laser beam.